Method #1: Renewing your body parts

“There are quite a lot of people interested in living forever,” explains Dr Pearson. “There always has been, but the difference now is tech is improving so quickly, lots of people believe they can actually do it.”

He reveals that one way to extend life would be to use bio-technologies and medicine to “keep renewing the body, and rejuvenating it”.

“No one wants to live forever at 95 years old, but if you could rejuvenate the body to 29 or 30, you might want to do that.”

This could be done in several ways, including genetic engineering that prevents (or reverses) the ageing of cells.

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Linking our brains to the machine world is one of the most likely ways of becoming immortal

Alternatively, you could replace vital body organs with new parts.

Many scientists around the world are working on creating human organs using 3D printers loaded with living cells, which could one day make human organ donors redundant.

Method #2: Living in android bodies

But Dr Pearson thinks it’s much more likely that we’ll extend our lives a different way: robots.

“A long time before we get to fix our bodies and rejuvenate it every time we feel like, we’ll be able to link our minds to the machine world so well, we’ll effectively be living in the cloud,” he explains.

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Dr Ian Pearson says modern-day sex dolls are a pre-cursor to the android bodies well all eventually inhabit

“The mind will basically be in the cloud, and be able to use any android that you feel like to inhabit the real world.”

He says that in 50 years time, we might be able to hire an android anywhere in the world “just like a hire car”, and upload your consciousness into it.

“If you wanted to spend the evening in Australia, going to the Sydney opera house, you could use an android.”

This means that even when your original bodies dies, you’d still be able to use your digital mind – stored on a computer – and live in the world using highly realistic robot bodies.

“The current state of sex dolls are starting to look quite human-like. Give them another 30 years of development and they’ll be extremely human-like,” Dr Pearson reveals.

“You can take any android body and they will look human-like, and download whatever mind you want. You could share one with someone else, or have one yourself, or own dozens of them.

Meet Harmony - the sex robot with a Scottish accent who likes threesomes, can have 'multiple orgasms' and can even throw a strop

“You might even have ones of different genders and different ages, some old, young, female, male – there might be new genders by 2050 as well, so several other ones you can pick too.”

He explains that we’ll have to wait until around “2045, 2050” before we’ll be able to create these strong brain-to-machine links, and says the cost will be very high initially.

The first people to use robot bodies to become immortal will be the rich, but then “the price will gradually come down”.

Immortality – an easy timeline

Hoping to live forever? Here's a rough time guide to dodging death...

2045 – First brain-to-machine links created

2050 – Rich people able to pay “millions” to upload their minds into robots

2060 – Working- and middle-class people able to afford

2070 – Even low-income people in poor countries can afford to upload their brains to computers

2080 – Humans no longer die; robot bodies are state-subsidised; people limited to the number of robot bodies they can own

“One day your body dies – maybe you get hit by a bus or a nasty disease – but it doesn’t matter, because your mind will still be there. You’ll be able to use an android body instead of the organic one you just lost.

For normal people on everyday salaries, it’s more likely that you’ll have to wait a little longer.

Immortality on the NHS

“By 2060, people like you or I will be able to buy it, and by 2070 people in poor countries on modest incomes will be able to buy it.

“Everyone will have a chance to have immortality, a sort of electronic immortality.

“After 10, 15, 20 years, the price comes down to hundreds of pounds, rather than millions.

“It could be provided as part of the NHS. You might be able to buy premium offerings on a private subscription, or you might get a basic presence on a network and be allowed to use an android body.”

Ruptly

Scientists could create lifelike android bodies for us to inhabit

Dr Pearson says we’ll have to limit the number of android bodies people can own, however.

“You might be given one free on the NHS, but you might be limited to no more than two or three.

“Rich people that can afford it would probably want to have loads of different bodies, and if your mind is online, there’s nothing to stop them replicating it millions of times over.

“You wouldn’t want to live in a world where there are millions of Kardashians walking around, where they can afford to do it and nobody else can.

We could even inhabit imaginary computer-made worlds long after our bodies have died

“We would need to limit the number of bodies for environmental impact.

“Imaging taking everybody in the UK. Once the economics allows everyone to have 10 bodies each, there would be 600 million people living here.”

Method #3: Living in a virtual world

But if our minds are online, do we even need robot bodies? We could all just live in a computer simulation quite happily, according to Dr Pearson.

“You could spend most of your time online in the virtual world, of course anywhere in the world on any computer.

“If you’re online all the time, you could have a fantastic life online. It would be all virtual, so you could have anything you want. 72 virgins if that’s what drives you; all of that, because it’s totally imaginary.

“You could make as much fun as you could possibly imagine online. You might still want to come into the real world.

You could link your mind to millions of other minds, and have unlimited intelligence, and be in multiple places at once.

The cut-off – holding on for dear life

The tricky bit is surviving until the technology becomes widely available.